


Love Letters

by grrriliketigers



Category: Major Crimes (TV), The Closer
Genre: Emotional Infidelity, F/F, Infidelity, Love Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3879964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grrriliketigers/pseuds/grrriliketigers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>26	Brenda/Sharon - love letters</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for closerficfest 2015

Brenda glanced at her phone before picking it up, “hey you.” 

“Hey.” Fritz responded. 

“Are you getting ready to head to the airport?” Brenda looked at the clock quickly before looking back to the road. She braced herself as the driver took a sharp turn. 

“Actually, no.” 

“Oh?” Brenda furrowed her brow. “Won’t you miss your flight?”

“Surprise!” 

“Surprise _what_ , Fritz?” Brenda fought the urge to roll her eyes and her partner shook his head. 

“I got here early!” He smiled. “I’m at the apartment.” 

“ _You’re at the apartment?_ ” She repeated incredulously. “I wish you would’ve asked me before changing your flight. I'm in Manassas. O'Shea and I are chasing a lead."

"No problem." Fritz insisted, "I'm tired from my flight anyway. I'm going to grab a nap. This way I'll be rested by the time you get home. Maybe I’ll get you some groceries and do some tidying."

"Okay, sleep well. Love you." Brenda didn't wait for the reply before hanging up. She chewed her bottom lip uneasily. 

“Everything alright?” O’Shea asked with a knowing smirk. 

Brenda sighed inwardly. “My husband came early and is going to spend the day cleaning my apartment! Yay…” She bemoaned with sarcastic enthusiasm. 

Fritz didn't love his wife's brusque manner but understood that she was on duty. He pulled off his polo shirt and dropped it on top of his bag and stripped down to his boxers. He climbed into bed, shut his eyes and feel asleep before his head even hit the pillow. 

There are many reasons why a married couple would live on opposite sides of the country but very few did it to rekindle their relationship. Sure, Fritz hated being without Brenda back in L.A. but it did mean she didn't get to see Sharon Raydor.

The last year had been a challenging one for Brenda and Fritz. Fritz had figured it out months before he actually had the nerve to bring it up, but he realized that his wife was infatuated with Sharon Raydor. Brenda had denied it at first, of course, but, one night after consuming enough Merlot to drown an elephant, Brenda tearfully lamented that Sharon would never feel the same way for her. She swore that nothing had physically happened between them – with the implication that it wasn’t for lack of intention on Brenda’s part. Fritz spent the next week at a hotel until Brenda showed up on his doorstep asking how she could fix what she’d done. 

The solution ended up being that Brenda would accept the job in D.C. and Fritz would visit once a month and maybe Brenda would return to L.A. once a year or for any unforeseen special events. 

This was Fritz’s fourth trip out to D.C. and Brenda hadn’t stepped foot in L.A. for almost six months. He was beginning to think that their solution had been right on the money as the time they’d spent together in D.C. had been wonderful. 

Fritz awoke from his nap a few hours later and stretched out sleepily. He checked the refrigerator and chuckled and shook his head at his wife’s eating habits. The contents of her fridge consisted of several Chinese food takeout boxes, one third of a chocolate layer cake and three bottles of coconut water. 

He ate a thin slice of the cake and grabbed a coconut water before heading out to do some grocery shopping. He stocked Brenda’s fridge with fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, steaks and bacon; he stocked her pantry with staples and extra soup and canned tuna fish. 

He turned his attentions to the living room next and started picking up the sweaters and shoes and various other clothing items strewn about the space and put her laundry in the washing machine. He swept the kitchen and vacuumed the carpeted areas. He hated himself a little for waiting on her like that but he honestly had nothing else to do. 

By the time the dryer cycle ended he’d already finished his book and there was still over an hour before Brenda was supposed to get home. Brenda didn’t bother to pay for cable at this apartment and he was stuck watching whatever was on the basic channels while he folded the laundry. 

He lugged the laundry basket to the bedroom and began by hanging up the sweaters and skirts, put the t-shirts into the drawer and opened the top drawer for socks and pushed her pile of unpaired socks to the side and put his meticulously paired socks next to it. Opening the underwear drawer yielded a similar result: unfolded underwear tossed into the drawer carelessly. He pushed the haphazard pile to one side and was about to lay in his folded underwear when he saw the stack of letters that had been hidden under the chaos. 

Fritz’s heart pounded in his chest when he saw the neatly scrawled handwriting and return address of Captain Sharon Raydor.


	2. Chapter 2

Fritz brought the letters with him as he sat down on the bed. With shaking hands he leafed through the envelopes, counting five in total. With a well-deserved sense of trepidation he opened the envelope with the earliest postmark. 

He was aware that two things would happen once he read the letters. A series of events would be set into motion that he would be powerless to stop. Fritz was going to be upset about whatever he read and Brenda would be upset that he read her letters. 

But knowing that there was no good outcome from here forward, he forged on. He had a masochistic need to know what the letters said. 

_Dear Brenda,_

_I apologize for how long it’s taken for me to respond to your letter but know that it warmed my heart to find your lovely words amidst the junk mail. I am glad that you reached out to me because I agree that the way we left things was unresolved. All of the concerns that I had expressed all those months ago when you were still here in Los Angeles are the same._

_I care for you very deeply and it is because of that that I pushed you away that night. I know that that action hurt you and it isn’t until now that I feel that I’m able to truly explain myself. I’m scared. I’m scared of what caring for you that deeply means and I’m scared of how wonderful it was to have all of your passion and intensity focused on me and I’m very scared of how perfect it felt to have your lips on mine. I’ve spent many nights replaying that moment in my mind and each time it feels more and more painful to me that I pushed you away. But I’m scared of that feeling too._

_At this point, I don’t know if I have the courage or the energy to make such a huge change in the way I live my life. I have no problem with people who have same-sex attraction but until you I didn’t know that that was something that I was capable of. Being raised Irish Catholic and twelve years of Catholic school make it very difficult for me to reconcile these feelings with the image of myself that I’ve maintained all these years._

_I’m sorry that these things have hurt you because the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you. You are the best of us, Brenda Leigh, I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for you. I hope to hear from you soon._

_Sincerely,  
Sharon_

Fritz let that letter drop to the floor and opened the second one. 

_Dear Brenda,_

_As always, your beautiful words have touched my heart. I am embarrassed to admit how happy that I was to get your second letter. I got so excited that Rusty asked me if I’d won the lottery. Maybe I have, in a way. How special and desirable I feel that someone like you could be interested in me._

_Some nights I wonder what it would be like to fall asleep with your arms around me. I imagine that in the morning I’d discover that all of the covers had been tugged off of me and wrapped snugly around you and I imagine pulling on it just enough so that I could slide under and press against your warmth. And then I imagine you kissing my nose playfully before we both fall asleep for another hour before our alarms go off._

_I can’t believe I just wrote that… but I’ve decided to be brave so I’m going to leave it in. In the spirit of the total transparency that you suggested. Once again, I am more than flattered by your description of your feelings for me._

_Well, I’ll end this letter here before I decide I’m not brave enough to send it to you._

_Sincerely,  
Sharon_

The second letter joined the first on the floor and Fritz opened the third, being less careful with how he handled it. 

_Dear Brenda,_

_Next time warn me before you write something like that! I had the letter sitting on my desk at Major Crimes and I read it in my office with my blinds open during lunch. Fortunately for me no one was in the bullpen! I will admit that I blushed. I can’t remember a time when anyone wanted me like that. You’re going to be the death of me, you know?_

_Again, I feel scared of my own feelings. As I read your letter I felt desire and arousal and I confess that I’ve read it several times in bed when I can’t fall asleep. Each time I read it I feel a deeper ache, a deeper desire for your words to become a reality._

_Perhaps we’re meant to be star-crossed lovers. What cruel fate that I feel this attraction for you that I then have difficulty reconciling. If it was meant to happen shouldn’t I not feel this inner conflict?_

_Sincerely,  
Sharon_

Fritz felt the anger bubbling up inside of him. Brenda had re-initiated the contact between them, she’d worked at convincing Sharon. He was afraid of how it ended but he continued on to the fourth letter, too far in to stop now. 

_Dear Brenda,_

_Your story about your first attraction to a woman was actually a great comfort. It makes me feel better that you weren’t always as confident or sure as you are now. It makes me feel that there’s a possibility that I could get there as well._

_My thoughts of you are increasing every day. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think of when I close my eyes. I think the squad is even noticing in a way, I’ve been told that I’ve been acting like you these days. (A very high honor indeed!) But when I think about you, the thing I think of most is what it would feel like to feel your skin against mine. I think I could lie in bed with you for hours and just memorize every inch of your skin. My confessions are so much more tame than yours but it’s that sort of intimacy I can’t help but fantasize about. Your sweet words give me more confidence than I’ve felt in any other relationship. You haven’t laid eyes on me in five months and yet you’ve given me this incredible confidence in my body in a way that no one else has ever been able to. I believe wholeheartedly that you’re sincere in your description of how you see me and through your eyes I feel like the most beautiful person in the world. However, through my eyes, that honor most definitely belongs to you. With your enigmatic dark chocolate eyes, your mischievous smile and your cascading blonde waves, words fail me when I try to describe how beautiful you are. You’re priceless; you are without equal._

_I want so badly to be in a place where I could give myself wholly to you. Though with each letter I feel closer and closer to such a place. You make me feel very wanted but most importantly you make me feel safe. Safety in another person is something I haven’t found very often which makes it all the more precious coming from you._

_I eagerly await your next letter._

_Yours,  
Sharon_

_P.S. I included a little card with my perfume like you requested._

Fritz looked into the envelope and didn’t see any such card. He dropped the fifth letter to the bed and returned to the underwear drawer but did not find the card there either. He yanked open Brenda’s bedside drawer, pulling it out and letting it fall to the floor. Books and pens and odd and ends spilled across the floor but not a card in sight. 

Fritz furrowed his brow and glanced around the room in thought. Maybe she kept it with her. Knowing Brenda, if it was something she treasured she would have hidden it away so that no one else would be able to locate it and take it from her. 

He thought back to Sharon’s words: _you’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think of when I close my eyes,_ and on a hunch he picked up one pillow and then the other and found a two inch square notecard. 

He hesitated before he picked it up and he felt his stomach turn as he caught a whiff of Sharon Raydor’s signature scent. 

He wasn’t sure he had the courage to read the final letter.


	3. Chapter 3

Fritz stared at the fifth envelope for what felt like eternity. Brenda had cut into it less carefully. The first four appeared to have been opened with her letter opener but the fifth one seemed to have been ripped open by hand. Maybe she’d been impatient to read it, too impatient to wait until she got up to her apartment. 

He imagined his wife pulling the envelope from the mailbox and smiling hugely, heart pounding as she tore into it. 

Brenda had torn the post mark. Fritz folded it over so that he could read it and realized that she’d only received it the day before. 

“I could just stop now.” He said out loud. He chewed his bottom lip. “How could it get any worse?”

He stood up and paced the floor. “Of course it could get worse. It’s gotten worse with each letter, for Christ’s sake. Brenda’s been wooing the woman for months and she’s got her eating out of the palm of her hand.” 

He rubbed his face tiredly but recoiled when he found that his hands smelled of Sharon’s perfume now and it filled him with dejected anger. 

“Maybe I’ll just set it on fire.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Brenda would have a fit. It would probably be worth it…” 

After a short internal debate, he sat back down on the bed, picked up the fifth letter and prepared himself for the worst. 

_Dear Brenda,_

_I want to start out by apologizing for how long it’s taken me to respond to your last letter but I wanted to get my feelings straight for myself before I passed them along to you._

_My first thought was ‘I love you, too’ and that scared me._

Fritz stopped for a moment as he felt his eyes well up with tears. He blinked the tears away and lifted the handwritten letter again. 

_I had such a quick and impulsive reaction and I had to make sure that those feelings were really genuine before I said them to you. I think they are very important words and I would never say them unless I truly meant them._

_I did a lot of soul searching and I re-read all of your letters and replayed every time we met in person in my mind and no matter how I looked at it I came to the same conclusion every time._

_I love you, Brenda Leigh Johnson. In the words of Elizabeth Barret Browning,_ I love you to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach _. And it is scary. But it is wonderful. It’s butterflies in my stomach. It’s indelible smile on my face. It’s I would move heaven and earth for you. _

_You’ve really and truly changed me and my life will never be the same but now instead of dreading the change I feel ready to embrace it. Though maybe in baby steps if you’ll indulge me a bit further._

_I’m open to discussing a plan of when and where we could meet. Possibly in Washington D.C. like you’d suggested or maybe we could spend a long weekend somewhere with nice weather – maybe at the beach._

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

_Love,  
Sharon_

Before he could think better of it he ripped the letter down the middle and balled both halves and threw them at the bureau. The light paper balls bounced mutely off the wood and fell to the floor. 

He felt sick to his stomach. He knew that it was psychosomatic but as he stood up he felt his stomach lurch. His head was spinning. 

He had no idea what to do next. 

One thing was certain, he didn’t intend to be there when Brenda came home.


End file.
